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Interim Update
Mar. 14th, 2004 10:41 pmSemagic is all full of notes on California. Yes, I know that I can have multiple entries going, but it confuses me. So I'm doing this entry on-line and hoping it will not be eaten.
I am quite concerned about various volcanic upheavals in Minn-Stf, which I still think of as my social group, though I have been so lamentably bad at getting to meetings that I was not eligible to vote in the last Board election. It's true that I've thought probably half a dozen times over the past five years, "This will really do it, it's all over," and have been wrong. I'm having, in useless but pleasantly sentimental reaction, a lot of fond flashbacks to my own personal "best time of Minn-Stf" (this time varies from person to person and says more about persons than about anything else), when it was a near certainty that every single person I liked in the immediate area would be in the same place for up to sixteen hours, every two weeks.
My own local microcosm is blessedly free of upheavals at the moment. We are waiting to hear about a refinancing deal, and I am waiting for the book contract to get negotiated, and I would really like both these things to get done soon.
Outside, it's March, almost stereotypical March, wild and windy with an instantaneously-changing sky, sudden hailstorms, and hopeful green shoots under south-facing walls blighted by near-record-low overnight temperatures, lest anybody become too complacent. Inside, we should be doing more to straighten things up so the appraiser can actually see the house. I've been collapsing and tying into bundles an endless supply of cardboard, and making more space for hardcover fiction by sternly suppressing a rich, overflowing, dusty collection of maps and brochures and castle guidebooks and photo essays about the Lake District and old RSC programs. By suppressing I mean that the pretty stuff goes downstairs with the other large colorful books, and the merely useful into an archive box. I am not throwing this stuff out. If I had thrown out the stuff that other people throw out and that I am always being exhorted to throw out, I never could have written Tam Lin.
The long-distance relationship is working. I don't like it at all., but it's working. I particularly didn't like the last week or two, when several large emotional events happened in Eric's life and I was much too far away to be useful. Matters are arranging themselves fairly well, and that is a relief, but I continue to have basic objections to the separation.
I am still watching TV with Raphael; our allegiance has shifted a bit, over to "Joan of Arcadia," which I was very resistant to even thinking about for some time, because the events of the last few years have made me violently allergic to any non-materialistic worldview; and also to "Cold Case." We still watch our older favorites like "The West Wing" and "C.S.I.," but we shake our heads and mutter a lot, and sometimes, if we had any rotten tomatoes, we would probably throw them.
The transit strike is starting to get on my nerves. I felt I should not complain much, since I don't have to commute to work, but what it has done is to completely remove my autonomy. When the buses are running, I can, within the pretty generous limits of the Number 18's schedule, go to the bank, the grocery store, Target, the pharmacy to get my medications, the clinic to keep my doctor's appointments; visit a fairly large assortment of friends; and check out how Loring Park looks in March. When they are not, I have a wealth of volunteers to drive me to any of these places, but the whole feeling of the matter is utterly different. It's the transit company's job to take me places; if my friends do so, it's a favor. And frankly, among the things I dislike about this is that, should I happen to be feeling anti-social, I can't treat them as if they were bus drivers.
It is a little petty of me to say what I'm about to, in the shadow of recent events in Madrid, continuing horror in Iraq, the ever-present (and so disgustingly reiterated by the ads for the continuation of the idiocy presently being practiced in the White House) recollection of September 11. Nevertheless, in a city without public transit, I feel that civilization is shredding just a bit all around its edges.
Pamela
I am quite concerned about various volcanic upheavals in Minn-Stf, which I still think of as my social group, though I have been so lamentably bad at getting to meetings that I was not eligible to vote in the last Board election. It's true that I've thought probably half a dozen times over the past five years, "This will really do it, it's all over," and have been wrong. I'm having, in useless but pleasantly sentimental reaction, a lot of fond flashbacks to my own personal "best time of Minn-Stf" (this time varies from person to person and says more about persons than about anything else), when it was a near certainty that every single person I liked in the immediate area would be in the same place for up to sixteen hours, every two weeks.
My own local microcosm is blessedly free of upheavals at the moment. We are waiting to hear about a refinancing deal, and I am waiting for the book contract to get negotiated, and I would really like both these things to get done soon.
Outside, it's March, almost stereotypical March, wild and windy with an instantaneously-changing sky, sudden hailstorms, and hopeful green shoots under south-facing walls blighted by near-record-low overnight temperatures, lest anybody become too complacent. Inside, we should be doing more to straighten things up so the appraiser can actually see the house. I've been collapsing and tying into bundles an endless supply of cardboard, and making more space for hardcover fiction by sternly suppressing a rich, overflowing, dusty collection of maps and brochures and castle guidebooks and photo essays about the Lake District and old RSC programs. By suppressing I mean that the pretty stuff goes downstairs with the other large colorful books, and the merely useful into an archive box. I am not throwing this stuff out. If I had thrown out the stuff that other people throw out and that I am always being exhorted to throw out, I never could have written Tam Lin.
The long-distance relationship is working. I don't like it at all., but it's working. I particularly didn't like the last week or two, when several large emotional events happened in Eric's life and I was much too far away to be useful. Matters are arranging themselves fairly well, and that is a relief, but I continue to have basic objections to the separation.
I am still watching TV with Raphael; our allegiance has shifted a bit, over to "Joan of Arcadia," which I was very resistant to even thinking about for some time, because the events of the last few years have made me violently allergic to any non-materialistic worldview; and also to "Cold Case." We still watch our older favorites like "The West Wing" and "C.S.I.," but we shake our heads and mutter a lot, and sometimes, if we had any rotten tomatoes, we would probably throw them.
The transit strike is starting to get on my nerves. I felt I should not complain much, since I don't have to commute to work, but what it has done is to completely remove my autonomy. When the buses are running, I can, within the pretty generous limits of the Number 18's schedule, go to the bank, the grocery store, Target, the pharmacy to get my medications, the clinic to keep my doctor's appointments; visit a fairly large assortment of friends; and check out how Loring Park looks in March. When they are not, I have a wealth of volunteers to drive me to any of these places, but the whole feeling of the matter is utterly different. It's the transit company's job to take me places; if my friends do so, it's a favor. And frankly, among the things I dislike about this is that, should I happen to be feeling anti-social, I can't treat them as if they were bus drivers.
It is a little petty of me to say what I'm about to, in the shadow of recent events in Madrid, continuing horror in Iraq, the ever-present (and so disgustingly reiterated by the ads for the continuation of the idiocy presently being practiced in the White House) recollection of September 11. Nevertheless, in a city without public transit, I feel that civilization is shredding just a bit all around its edges.
Pamela
